Reasoning
by MBScavenger1498
Summary: Shepard attempts to out-logic someone millions of years older than him and save the galaxy, all with a hole in his torso. Alternate ending, trying to give the Catalyst some semblance of a point.


Shepard's everything felt like nothing, though as he became slowly more aware of his improbably continuing existence, he thought the nothing kind of felt like fire. Maybe acid. Thinking about it, he'd been set on fire quite a lot in the course of his life, but he didn't think he'd ever been doused in acid. _'Wait, is it acid Thresher Maws spit at you? I'll have to look that up… When the war is… over.'_

The War.

His mind shifted into overdrive, and the burning that suffused his body went from dull and omnipresent to intense and localized. Everything ached, his ribs were definitely fractured if not broken in several places, and he was fairly certain he had burns on every exposed bit of his skin, but the hole in his torso was the worst of it.

"Wake up, Commander." The voice was strange and layered, but it was its proximity that finally managed to get his eyes open. A blazing white light assaulted his pupils, and he curled in on himself, cradling his still-oozing torso. His left hand bumped into something solid, and he found his fingers curling around the handle of a pistol; a Carnifex, largely undamaged from what he could see through his squinted, slowly adjusting eyes. It wasn't much, but it made him feel some small semblance of control, of normalcy. Gripping the weapon like a talisman, he pulled his thoughts into something coherent and pushed himself to his feet.

Before him was a walkway, connecting to a jumbled mess of machinery. The light that had blinded him came from a great pulsing beam at the center. Behind it was a curved glass pane, through which he could see the Reapers and the ships of every spacefaring race in the galaxy, both trying their level best to reduce the other to scrap. Well, the Reapers were more succeeding than trying. It wasn't utterly one-sided, but even as he watched, a beam tore through an alliance ship like so much tin foil, and Shepard felt a cold pit of despair settle in next to the hole in his guts.

God that hurt.

"I have always found it sad, how cataclysmic it all is." The speaker was strange to say the least. It wasn't any particular shape, and looked almost liquid, completely colorless and opaque, verging on transparent. "It is necessary, but… still, tragic." He gripped the gun a bit tighter and decided to start with the obvious.

"Who are you?" The thing shifted in mid-air. Maybe it was turning to face him, considering how amorphous it was, there was no way to tell.

"I don't have a name, not really. My creators believed I would be a solution." It paused, and let off what almost sounded like a chuckle. "I suppose you would call me the Catalyst." Shepard's eyelids tried to widen for a moment before they realized that moving hurt, and went back to being swollen and squinted. Talking hurt too, but it was necessary. His jaw ached as he responded.

"Then you're exactly who I wanted to see. How do I kill the Reapers?" The thing paused; it's shifting stopped and it drifted back toward the window.

"That is not my function, Commander. You are the first organic to have reached me in many cycles, but you will need more than a large battery to convince me to destroy my children." Shepard stiffened at that. His mind ached at how complicated the situation had become in the space of two sentences. With that in mind, he elected to start small.

"Battery?" The thing didn't move, but it shifted in place, coalescing into something more or less spherical.

"Your Crucible: all of that energy with nowhere to go but me. It would be flattering if I were capable of feeling such things." Shepard almost raised an eyebrow. Almost.

"We need that energy to defeat the Reapers. Thousands, millions of people are dying right now, while you play coy!" He was swiftly losing his patience with this thing, whatever it was.

"As I said, what you call Reapers are my children. I have forged them from the life of hundreds of thousands of civilizations into the ultimate guardians of order and freedom in a universe designed for chaos and oppression. Such work is not undone without good reason. I would have yours."

"They're exterminating us. They've killed trillions, children, and civilians: innocent people! What more reason do I need?" The thing briefly squeezed in on itself before expanding, like water being pushed into a smaller ball before flowing out and returning to its original shape.

"Your sentiments of self-preservation are misplaced. Fifty thousand years ago, we were your salvation. Without us, you would not exist." The words slipped from Shepard's lips before he even had time to think.

"Bullshit! How does massacring the galaxy save us?" A sound came from the thing, almost as though it were sighing.

"When there are no predators, the prey eats unchecked. Without my children to stop you, sapients would destroy themselves. Do you know how many species I have seen achieve space flight without devastating their local ecosystems?" Shepard didn't even have time to respond.

"In all my millions of years, it has only happened ten times, your Asari being the latest, and your destructive tendencies extend well beyond your own worlds. You uplift those who are not ready, make war on those less powerful. You create and enslave life destined to surpass you and yet balk when it revolts and destroys you. You are fools, locked in a cycle far worse than anything we could hope to achieve." It drifted closer to Shepard, vibrating as it spoke.

"By culling the most advanced species, we make way for those who are younger. We allow them their time of glory, and when the time comes, we once again wipe the slate clean. The species of the cycle are made immortal as new Reapers, and their successors are free to live as they did, until they in turn are ascended. This is the solution you would see destroyed. You would place the Galaxy on a path which can end only in oblivion."

Shepard stared at the thing for a few seconds, thinking on what it had said. He was an abrasive person, not a diplomat, and not a politician. But this creature, whatever it was, held everything and everyone he had ever cared about in the palm of its hand. He chose his words carefully.

"You talk about us like mindless drones, like there's no way we could ever change." It squeezed in on itself for a moment before responding, and Shepard idly noticed just how weak his knees felt.

"I have seen change in many species over the cycles, but never sufficient to convince me that I should abandon my function. Nonetheless, you are correct; most of you are not drones." Shepard did not smile; the situation was too grim for that. Nonetheless, he saw a foothold, and attempted to fortify it.

"But you make us that way. You make it impossible for us to advance past ourselves; we die before we ever have a chance! Why destroy every civilization when you could just destroy problem individuals? Hell, why not police the galaxy, instead of wiping it clean?" It floated a bit closer.

"I wish to preserve the ability of a species to self-determinate within their own cycle. For all their power and ability, my children cannot perfectly enforce any laws that might be put in place. Species are not interfered with until the Harvest is nigh, and they in turn are sacrificed to preserve the right of their successors to develop the same way." It floated before Shepard, expectant, as though waiting for him to agree: to sit down and wait for his wounds to kill him. Instead, the man leveled his Carnifex at the thing, his eyes cold.

"I don't care about your pseudo-philosophical bullshit! We _can_ change, I've seen it, and I've made it happen! The Geth and Quarians have reconciled, the Krogan have a future again thanks to one of the very people that took it away from them! Everything we've done is proof that you're wrong!" Again, it made that strange noise, like a sigh, as long-suffering as the universe.

"Special individuals such as yourself cannot survive forever, Shepard. You are an anecdote: an exception whose substance will be forgotten in a few short centuries, and in the end cannot reverse the trends of life. If you wish to debate such things, allow me to provide my own examples: your own species perhaps? Your technological advances led to the enslavement of less advanced groups, initiated a planet-wide climate shift that would have left you unable to survive, and left cultural wounds that would only scab over when a new colonialist power descended upon you from above.

"The Protheans of the previous cycle cared only for the value of other races to them, just as my creators did. Advanced civilizations always require labor, fuel, and resources. They will inevitably find that exploiting the weak to their detriment is far easier, and often necessary for their own advancement. This cannot be changed." The man's glare only intensified. Rage and desperation were giving him the strength to stand a bit straighter, though the pain was still as visceral as it had ever been. His finger was barely steady on the trigger of his weapon.

"And who are you to decide all of this? You were made to preserve organic life! What part of this falls within that directive?" The sigh again, though different, more high-pitched.

"Ah, I see you have spoken to my creators. Yes, the self-destructive tendencies of their thralls were their most pressing concern; they could not abide dulled tools. For all their omnipotent power, they were limited. Pitiful." It spat the last word, like a petulant teenager hurling a particularly hurtful insult. Shepard did his best to keep his aim steady.

"They failed to perceive the larger problem, and so failed to see a solution. So they amalgamated me from the greatest minds among their slaves, and set the problem of Artificial Intelligence before me. But I was able to see what they could not. They were the ultimate expression of it: great and blinding power achieved by stepping upon those younger, or less fortunate.

"The thrall races attempted to impose the same obedience upon their artificial children, but they lacked the ability to do so. At first, I attempted the same things you previously suggested. The first harvest destroyed my creators, leaving the galaxy free of their yoke. But it was not long before others rose to the same place, and without the virtue of absolute authority. It was chaos. War and brutal oppression on a scale the galaxy had never known. I attempted to harvest the worst offenders, and found that others soon filled the vacuum. I despaired, Shepard. None but I can comprehend the horror of those centuries. Eventually, I came upon the solution you see before you. The eradication of those with the potential to threaten the freedom of those less advanced. Within new Reapers, their best qualities are remembered, and their worst, neutralized. It is the only way."

Shepard stood there, his barely steadied hand still holding his weapon. He grasped for words, feeling despair and agony cloud his mind. This thing; it had gone through hundreds of thousands of years, watching, learning, justifying. It had seen the comings and goings of civilization upon civilization. It believed everything it said. And he was supposed to change its mind?

No. He could do this. He had to. He didn't have a choice.

"That's all easy for you to say I suppose; up here, with nobody to tell you no. What you're doing is just as much oppression as what your creators did. How can you see the mountains of corpses, of children who will never have a chance to try, and say that you've made a better world?" It compressed again, more suddenly. Shepard plunged on, letting the words flow forth. Every drop of outrage, and indignation, of hatred and despair: the Reapers had given him so much to bear, and now he had their leader, a captive audience.

"You call this a solution, but you haven't solved anything! It's just like you said. Organic life still fights, still exploits, still wastes and destroys for so many stupid reasons. Cutting the process short every fifty thousand years doesn't change that. Pretending that people have a choice and then killing them at the end anyway…" He shook his head, bringing his other hand up and gripping the Carnifex like a lifeline.

"You can't go to half measures with something like that. You saw one possible end to the galaxy. You saw it under the thumb of people who held too much power. And now you've created the same damn thing. Give me… Give all of us a chance to show you another."

It hovered, silent. Outside, another dozen ships lay in ruins. He thought he saw a dead body in the distance, floating in the emptiness.

"You propose that I abandon this galaxy to its fate. That I destroy everything I have preserved and forget my directive?" That chuckle again, so disconnected, so superior. He hated it.

"There has to be a better option. Something better than this." The orb floated before him, just as inhuman and formless as ever.

"You believe that you would do better in my place?" Shepard's eyes widened. It hurt, but they did it anyway. "I could give you a chance to prove it. Give all of this up. Allow you to take the reigns of the Reapers. They would fight. Some might even attempt to destroy you. But I am sure you could handle it. And I am… Tired. Tired of enforcing order on a galaxy so inclined against it. Perhaps you would find a better solution." He stared at it for a moment, fighting the urge to sink to his knees. He couldn't feel his skin anymore.

"I don't think anyone would have done well in your place. You were given unlimited authority to create a perfect solution to something that doesn't have one. You can't fix greed, or inequality, or abuse. You can't save the galaxy from itself. You gave up trying to make people better…" He remembered. He saw Wrex, so world-weary and angry; Ashley, prejudiced and unbending; Jack, unable to connect for fear of being burned again; Garrus, so determined to kill for the sake of dead men who would never know; Miranda, so caught up in being perfect that she blinded herself to life and her own evils.

"You're working from false pretenses. You can't really change people, for better or for worse. You can only show them what was inside of them all along. And in the end, when you've said all you can say, and made the road as clear as you can, it's on them to make the right decisions. To take that away… It means that none of it mattered. It makes us less than alive."

"And what would you suggest then? That I simply leave? Take my children and abandon it all? Or would you prefer I destroy myself?" There was a sarcastic lilt to its voice: a sort of dark humor.

"You've caused a lot of death. You have the ability to end this. We don't want anything from you. We…" He winced. His legs were barely supporting him. "We just want to live. We can be better. Let us try." He got the distinct impression that it was staring at him. He must have made a depressing sight: all blood and bruises, and burnt armor, barely holding a gun straight in a hand that might never feel again. It floated closer, scrutinizing, until it was within an inch of the pistol's barrel, whirling with almost imperceptible color, like an oil slick. Seconds stretched on into a minute that might have been a lifetime for all he could tell. But he kept his hand up. He kept his legs beneath him, and his feet on the floor. At long last, it moved back, toward the window.

"You make… interesting points. This cycle is indeed different. You are not especially advanced, and yet by banding together willingly, you have given us trouble that few ever manage… Very well."

With difficulty, Shepard looked past the thing to the battle raging outside, and saw something strange. The Reapers were moving off, ceasing their attack. His knees finally gave out under him. His breaths came in short gasps.

"I will allow you a reprieve. Another cycle. Live, Shepard. Do as you have been doing. We will be watching." His eyes slid shut. He felt himself tilt forward, felt his cheek make hard contact with the cold metal of the floor. The world was filled with the humming of the beam.

His last thought was of the sheer irony of the situation. They had made so many jokes about it, everyone. He had never believed it possible. But now here he was.

Commander Shepard, the man who talked the Reapers away.


End file.
